


I'll have a look inside your mind and tell where you belong

by drizzlydaze



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4262064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drizzlydaze/pseuds/drizzlydaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is the Sorting Hat and Erik is the Goblet of Fire. Really. (Sorry.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll have a look inside your mind and tell where you belong

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like animate inanimate object fic, because this is, sadly, that. It's crack! But it's serious! I don't know.

It came into being slowly but wholly, knowing its use, its allegiances, its abilities, and its makers. It did not yet, however, know itself; but none of them thought of that and neither did it, for it was something to be worn by others and that left precious little to itself.

Godric bespelled it with speech and purpose, its basic rudimentary existence. Then Helga imbued loyalty and care into its cloth, and hardiness into its seams and stitches. Salazar gifted it with Legilimency and some measure of shrewdness. And Rowena gave it wit, clear thinking, and the final sentience that held it today.

(Sometimes, it thinks that she gave the curiosity. For all its resolve, it could never decide if this was a gift or damnation. Why would one give a sentient, ever-living object cause to _care_ for the human world?)

~~~~~

A girl who was afraid of her own shadow (it had pounced up once to gobble up the man who threw stones at her, _witch, witch_ ) and her own magic. Her family had cast her out. This was not unusual. Salazar was adamant that she would not be one of his; she was not of the blood. Rowena said that thinking like that was narrow and petty—stupid too, which made Salazar bristle. Her concerns were the ones to touch him; Helga and Godric had far more moral issues about it that Salazar dismissed as foolishness.

“ _You know_!” Godric said, one hand clenched on the ruby hilt of his sword. His wand was carefully untouched. “You know what it is like to be feared and torn by those who can neither use nor understand magic, yet you would turn her away?”

“I never said that,” Salazar said. He rarely said anything he did not mean to. “I merely said that I would not take her. You might.” _This is a compromise, you fool, don’t you see how much I’m—?_ The hat heard everything he did not say, which was quite a lot. “You’re right, Godric. I _do_ know how it feels to have filth spit on me for being more powerful than they. _I_ know—more than any of you. And the worst of it is in that girl: those born both from filth and with magic, who try to cut the power from themselves and from us too.” _You made me like this, they always said. And so with wild magic and no compunctions—they were too broken, which, he thought, was what came of bad stock—they would instead covet the mundane, turning upon their own._ “You know of those wars. You’ve only never seen them yourself.”

“They have the _worst_ of it,” Godric said, _as if he could ever know, never, thank heavens he would never know_. “They need our help and understanding, not your scorn.”

“They gave that up when they turned against us.”

“Has she harmed you?” Godric seethed, one arm flung out to the small, shifting girl. “Or anyone else? She has done nothing but suffer—first from the ignorant and now from her own kind, if you would have it.”

Helga said, “You’re frightening the poor girl, the two of you. This is between the four of us and we fortunately have something that speaks for us all.” She strode over to the hat and picked it up.

“You are fools,” Rowena said as Helga placed the hat onto the girl’s head. “You more, Salazar. You are letting your emotions blind you.”

The girl—Ludmilla—was frightened, so the hat said, _there is no need to be afraid_. _No one will harm you, that I can guarantee._

She started anyway, which was typical of those none too experienced with organised magic. Then, carefully: _you’re the Hat, then?_

_Quite. And you are_ wonderful _._ She had a steady mind, as clear and sharp as ice. Her heart had not yet hardened even after those horrible years, but shrunk in fear. So very tender, this one. Yet that fear revealed an unquenchable will to survive, a most definite ruthlessness. She would fit well, it reflected, with Salazar. But that might turn her qualities to the worst. _What do you want?_

_Somewhere warm. Somewhere loved._

She was not given over to cynicism. And she fought and would fight only out of necessity. She was loyal only to herself but had never had any friends—or, indeed, any acquaintance for longer than three days. The hat felt that surety come over it, to know whom she belonged with.

It turned its attention outward again, where Salazar’s icy rage seemed due to turn hot, and said, “To you, Helga.”

~~~~~

It was not surprised when Salazar left—left Hogwarts one short and the other three bereft. It was surprised when it spoke to Salazar as he passed it on his way out in the dead of night.

“You mustn’t,” it said.

Even more surprised when Salazar paused to respond, face hung in shadow. “Tell me, then, what do you see in my head?”

That was the first—and last—invitation Salazar ever gave it. After a pause, it said, “Nothing that leaves Hogwarts well with your departure.”

“Then Godric has given you his own blindness. Hardly surprising, given the Sorting.” A slice of white that happened to catch a little candlelight when he turned to leave.

“No—wait—” it said, and the urgency it felt was from all of them—all four. “You know, you know _I_ know—you want the same things.”

“Funny,” Salazar said, “that’s what I said.” And he swept out.

~~~~~

More than curiosity, the hat had wonder and—now this, perhaps from Helga—concern. Even with the Four long dead, the hat could not help but be drawn to humans and their affairs. There were, it reflected, no other objects for it to talk to: anything in the portraits, even the animals, was essentially human; the animate objects it had encountered were not sentient; even gargoyles were bona fide creatures. So perhaps it was only natural that the hat should begin to adopt some human characteristics itself.

First it assumed a male identity. _He_. He felt firmly more masculine than feminine. He had first belonged to Godric, after all, who was enormously the former. And he had the voice of a man, anyway.

Then he began to compose poems, which like most things was a very human thing to do. Sitting around all year—it was not like the old, more disorganised days, when students joined year round—left him with time and energy enough. And if he hummed some of them into little songs—well, no one was the wiser.

But perhaps the largest mark of humanity emerged when he assumed a name. When the newly incumbent Headmistress turned out to be as eccentric (that too, a very human thing) as the rest and asked for a name to call him, the hat thought of a young, blue-eyed Ravenclaw from some years ago, who had had such a psychic affinity that they could converse year round. So the hat took his name in respect and admiration. The Headmistress was one of the few humans to ever know, let alone call him by it.

Charles wished very seldom now to meet another magical object like him. His hope had been worn down by the years.

(Time. There was another human thing.)

~~~~~

He had heard the legend, of course, but had never proved it true till the brave Galloway pulled the sword of Gryffindor from inside him. It was a strange sensation, a cool swoop of the blade heaving up from the deep, but whatever unpleasantness that arose was quickly banished by a heady excitement. He watched as Galloway, who but a few seconds ago was cornered and twitching, now threw himself against the hydra.

To draw the sword from him, it transpired, was an exceedingly rare occurrence. Not because Godric’s legacy had withered, for it was still most robust, but because Charles, seated for nearly all the year in the Headmaster’s office, was rarely ever at the scene. At any scene.

There it was again: that longing. It did no good, Charles thought, and it was especially ridiculous to feel it now when the most exciting spectacle was already unfolding before him. A _hydra_. Really. What more could he ask for?

~~~~~

Two hundred years later, there was a bid for interschool cooperation, which Charles approved of very much. But while the intent behind it was commendable, the means… somewhat less. To Charles, it was very nearly brutish. But this was a brutish time.

The inaugural Tournament was held at Hogwarts, which gave him a very nice view of things. Of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic he knew little. Durmstrang Institute he knew to be distantly related to Salazar’s old aim of blood-pure school. In any case, some of those foreign students thought it fun to try him on; Charles in turn revelled in these new minds. (Someone—probably Salazar, but it could have been Rowena—had given him the gift of all-tongues too.)

That game ended when an iron sconce—thankfully unlit—fell off the wall with a great wheezing wrench, scattering the students into their dormitories.

Strange. He’d thought it quite sturdy.

Turning his attention to the fallen sconce, he traced a trail of magic that ended in the sconce and began in the newest resident of the Headmaster’s office: the jewelled casket, stinking of magic, that sat with Charles on the Headmaster’s heavy oaken desk. Charles sensed something inside—perhaps an animal’s mind? But no, this was different and quite new.

Since as early as the second century, he despaired of seeing something new.

He shifted as best he could towards the source, reaching out with his mind to catch it. It was like trying to catch a shadow. Perhaps it was a new sort of magical creature, with a new sort of telepathic resistance. There was a vague irritation coming from the creature in the box now.

He tried probing at it sideways and under, swimming in and feinting—when suddenly his telepathy snagged onto something, like a different frequency, new but wonderfully clear. He saw now that there was no mental immunity from the creature at all, and that its mind was unknown, a strange stranger’s, because it was. It was something new.

_Hello?_ he broadcasted.

The annoyance was sharper than ever, likely not only because Charles now had a better connection to the mind that held it. In any case, there was no worded reply. This was not so unusual, with those unused to mental communication.

“Hello?” he said, quite loudly. “Can you hear me?”

“Hat?” The Deputy Headmaster entered the room, a relatively youngish man named Tuffet. “Whomever are you talking to?”

“Whatever’s in that casket.” It was a terrible habit, but very little was anything a _who_ to Charles without telepathic communication; two-way communication, that is.

Tuffet took his answer as a query. “As I understand it, a magical object that will assist in the Tournament.”

Not a creature, then, not a mind—but it _was_. A magical object, like him. He marvelled at the thought and a wonderful keenness spread through him. But before he could speak, Tuffet took the box underarm and out of the room. Charles did not see—or sense— it again for a very long time.

~~~~~

What had brought the Four the most misery had been their division and whittling, yet the one thing that none of them had stood against, not even Helga, had been more separation. A few centuries on and the four distinct Houses remained one of Hogwarts’ most distinguishing features.

Charles had never refused to Sort.

He dreamed of it, sometimes.

~~~~~

The Tournament had been hosted in Hogwarts a few times past but it was two and a half centuries after that first meeting that Charles finally set eyes on the jewelled casket for a second time. Immediately he thought, _Are you there? Can you hear me?_ Straining his faculties, he did sense the object within more strongly than before. He knew what it was now, from talk: _the Goblet of Fire_. Such a mystic title. He wondered if it meant that it held fire as others did wine, or, excitingly, that it was made of fire, though that would make it a rather poor goblet. “Please, can you hear me?”

There was no response, but the chest rattled. As though the thing inside was trying to shake its way out.

(Charles would help if he could, but as firm as his stitching was, he was still made of cloth.)

The room was rattling. The spindly Secrecy Sensor, the brass inkwell, the silver knobs on the drawers—everything metal. Charles suddenly remembered, in a flash of memory more than two centuries old, the iron sconce that had fallen to the floor and was never replaced.

A jet-black quill shot past him, no doubt led by its silver nib, nearly close enough to pierce right through his side. The casket itself was now being besieged by metal of all sorts.

“Perhaps an iron crow would suffice?” Charles offered.

There was no iron crow, but after a few minutes of twisting and prying the lid popped from the casket. From it, a sense of satisfaction blew over Charles. He hopped over as quickly as he could to the open case to peer inside, stretching his senses to feel out its mind.

It was a heavy wooden goblet that on its own would not be extraordinary in appearance. It was crudely carved, and the wood was thick and dull. But there was something else there: weak blue flames licking up the sides of the dark wood, flickering and ghostlike. And it was in that living fire that Charles sensed the mind. The Goblet, indeed—The Goblet of _Fire_.

_Speak to me, please. You must surely hear me now._

The flames wisped to the side of the goblet closest to Charles, a mix of emotions tossed out to him, a collection of words too garbled to make sense of as it tried to project to him. Then, finally, excruciatingly: _I thought I was alone._

It took a few moments before Charles could respond. _You’re not alone._

Another silence, after years of silence, simply to stretch out in the wonder lapping like cool waves over their two minds. To revel in a mind like his own—not busy and slow, like the humans’; not vague and instinctual, like animals; not alien, like the advanced magical creatures. But his.

_How can this be?_ It had a full voice, male like Charles’ and about the same tenor—and run ragged with emotion.

The only thing he could think was: _It is. We are. You’re here, finally you’re here…_

~~~~~

_Why would you take their name?_

In the presence of a magical object the same as him, Charles felt a shade embarrassed at his fascination with the humans, like an embarrassing maybe-Squib in the family (and wasn’t his choice of analogy just proving his point). He tried to parse together his own emotions on the topic—his curiosity, an outsider squinting into the window of the _real world_ ; an identity taken, if not precisely made, instead of one pressed upon him—a yarn clump he considered simply lobbing over to the Goblet. But that wouldn’t do. Eventually, he said, _Well, it feels more personal, doesn’t it?_

_We aren’t persons,_ the Goblet said flatly. Its flames turned even paler, colder, like ghost fire.

_No_ , Charles agreed, _but that’s not to say that human culture hasn’t its merits._

The Goblet was still sceptical, to put it mildly. Charles wasn’t surprised. _It’s foolishness, pure and simple._ Charles _means nothing. Just a name, a meaningless designation. It’s a way for humans to try to give themselves significance—but_ we _already have our own purposes. I am the Goblet of Fire, the impartial judge. You are the Sorting Hat. Already we know who we are, and those are better, more fitting names than any other, are they not?_

_I see your point_ , Charles said, _but I must also see something admirable about choosing our own meaning. You disparage humans yet extol the purposes_ they _thrust upon you._

The Goblet was silent for a moment. _As magical objects, that is our nature._ But it didn’t sound convinced, trailing off with an air of discontent.

Charles too stayed quiet, thinking.

_Yet we’re not just… theirs_ , it finally said. _Before they took us…_

_Before?_ He was nonplussed.

_Yes, before. They can’t make life, you know._

Charles had very little idea of what the Goblet was on about. It was thrilling.

_Just look at me,_ it continued. _The humans try to control whatever’s left of me from before. They trapped me in that box, lined it with spells…_ All the metal in the room suddenly rang out in glorious resonance. A little smugly: _Yet they fail. For that, I have you to thank._

But the Goblet had fought its own way out. At best, Charles had been moral support. Still: _Of course, I never understood why you could control metal. It seemed a strange ability for the humans to give you. So they never did give it? And they try to stifle it?_

A flicker of assent.

_Then who were you, before?_

There was uncertainty now, a strange feel to the usually steely mind. _There was a before, I know, but… Perhaps an elemental of some kind. That would explain it._

_But you don’t remember._ Charles paused. _I think it’s different with me, my friend. I have nothing the humans did not give me._ He felt a strange, unexpected sadness to that. Perhaps they were not so alike; perhaps he was still so alone…

He didn’t mean to project but the way the gentle lapping of the Goblet’s mind became more urgent indicated that it had heard every word, every doubt. _I know for a fact that they could not bespell you with life. That power is simply beyond them,_ it said. _And more deeply, I cannot believe the humans could ever make someone as—someone like you._

There had always been an undertow of happiness, of relief, when they talked; now it surfaced like the slippery head of a seal breaking water.

~~~~~

As the procession marched by the tower, he could hear harsh drumbeats rising up in the dry air and, beneath, the breathy, fluttering tones of a wooden flute. The sounds of mourning; he could hear their minds too, crying out. High emotion usually stuffed up the air, crowded the space, but this death only made a sucking cold.

Charles had never felt the boy’s mind, so Erik was not a _who_ to him, but Erik was most certainly a _who_ to the Goblet of Fire.

By now, their fifth meeting, Charles was used to the frequency of thought between them and their bond had strengthened such that they could communicate even while in different rooms, in different towers, in different castles. Charles often likened it to a unicorn hair: slim, shining, and strong.

_It was stupid, Charles. That human thing—death._

Others had died before, Charles didn’t mention. _Human things happen to humans. I thought you didn’t care for them._

_I don’t. Well—some. You know I choose the worthy ones, the Champions._

The ones sent to slaughter.

_I do_ not _…_

It didn’t, really. It was as much the Goblet’s job— _purpose_ —as Sorting was Charles’.

_But then, he is dead, like so many others,_ it continued with a frostbitten voice. _And I_ do _choose the worthy. Worthy for what? Why should they be made to turn on each other?_ And underneath, not broadcasted but fervid enough to be heard: _I did this. I was made for it._ They _made me for that…_

Charles had had similar thoughts often enough, that he was made only to divide. Still, he tried his best to comfort, the sting of the Goblet’s pain as real to Charles as his own emotion. _I used to think humans were so boundless—purposeless, too_ , Charles said. _They were never made, not like us, yet they must be made for something. Incomprehensible not to have been. And now—now I think I understand. It’s them, not you._

_What do you mean?_

_That human thing—death. They were made to die._

~~~~~

Whose face was he wearing? Stiff black cloth draped into some countenance. His weathered brow, shadowed into eyes; then his button nose perking out into the light; and the long deep valley that was his mouth. He looked old, he thought. Stern and mystical, his face very much like the face a hat would have. A face a hat would have, if it were human.

~~~~~

Charles knew the Goblet of Fire was extinguished between Tournaments, but he had never seen it before. It had always been an adjunct sort of fact that was too far away to be completely trusted in to be true. But now, with their connection so strong, Charles _felt_ it.

_They put too much of themselves in me, I suppose,_ it said. _I die within the year, Charles._

He tightened his grip on its mind. _No,_ no _… If I hold onto you, you need not._

_And if you don’t let go, you may be lost with me_. For a moment, it was quiet, melancholic like an echo. _So let go, Charles. It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. I—dissolve. And I don’t have to endure the agony of waiting,_ it said. _I sleep_ _and I wake, and you are there._

_Then I’ll stay with you till you sleep_. _And I’ll wait and wait, and you will wake to my mind touching yours._

~~~~~

Where the Goblet once took a name in jest, it now adopted one in—well, Charles thought it was in remembrance, but the Goblet was adamant that it was in irony. In any case, it was now a _he_ like Charles, and he was Erik.

_Erik_ , Charles tried, testing it out.

There was a strange stutter from Erik’s end. Charles quickly checked the connection between them, but it didn’t seem to be wavering, and Erik’s voice was as clear as ever when he finally responded, _Well. Yes. Very—very nicely ironic._

_It suits you._ Charles smiled and sent that smile along to Erik, who did not respond in kind and only projected a very serious air. _What’s wrong?_

_Someone’s coming up._

Charles now sensed the mind moving up the griffin stairwell, a child’s mind hyper alert and frayed. He recognised it—he knew all the minds in the castle intimately, after all, every single one of the students—and quickly placed it as a first-year girl he’d placed in Slytherin, Mary Tribault. The door opened. Small and brunette, she headed straight for Charles, snatched him down onto her head.

The moment he touched her head, the low-grade emotional buzz rose to a roar. The typical nervousness of a first-year being Sorted, shaking and staring before the crowd, was a flea compared to the turmoil in her mind. _Somewhere else, put me somewhere else. You said I’d thrive but it’s been weeks and **I’m going to choke out.**_

So pungent was the psychic disturbance that even Erik sensed it; he was projecting wariness and alarm, which really wasn’t helping.

****

Mary was gripping his brim was so tightly that she might have torn right through if he’d been a notch less sturdy, shuddering hands or no. **_I don’t belong here_** _put me away Sort me **away** Mudblood, a Mudblood in snake house, you idiot, **I can’t!** _

****

In the midst of the maelstrom, Charles centred himself, gauzing reassurance to both the child and Erik, who was glaring at how Mary’s nails pierced Charles’ fabric. Setting his own guilt aside of such a Sorting gone so wrong, he said, _Child, I hear you. I understand. It’s hard and you’re hurting and the only option seems like escape—but let me be the one to say that you belong. You have magic in your blood like any other, you have the birthright of all who walk these halls._

She cried, “I don’t belong here—there—” **_Sort me away, anywhere_** , and she was reliving all the glares and snide remarks, and when they’d cornered her one day by the lake—so exposed, but they weren’t afraid because everyone knew she was a Mudblood, no one would stop them.

Charles tamped down his outrage at the pain-spoiled memory. _It is bigotry that does not belong, not you. Stand tall. You belong. You are not al—_

“You won’t help,” she said, flat. Her thoughts had dissolved from coherence to pure distress, and a wall came up in her mind, blocking him. In a way, this was helpful; the wall wasn’t enough to cut off the connection completely, but was enough of a barrier that he wouldn’t be inundated with her wild emotion. More worryingly, though, the wall indicated her utter despair.

Charles paused, unsure how to proceed, suddenly convinced that his words were but platitudes. Useless. Would it be better for him to speak aloud or into her mind? What could he say? What could he possibly say? He could not Sort her anywhere else, now that the decision was made. Yet she was in such clear pain.

A ragged inhale from Mary as she turned her head; the door was open again with the Headmaster at the threshold. Charles could not decide if this turn of events was fortunate or not. “Tribault?” the Headmaster said, his eyes flicking up to Charles as he took in the scene. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Mary’s mind clamped down even more firmly. Her shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. Still at a loss for words, Charles sent along reassurance, belonging, warmth—hearthfire emotions like swathes of blanket, emotions he always tied back to Erik. And he had to say something, however inadequate, because it was still one of the fundamental truths of things: _You are stronger than you think._

“But what,” he said aloud after the Headmaster had left with a sniffling Mary, “is the point of _telling_? My words are so empty, Erik. My words do nothing, yet a word from me pigeonholes eleven-year-olds for the rest of their schooling.” As he spoke, he kept a gentle touch on Mary’s mind without alerting her to his presence; if his words were not empty, then they did only harm.

Erik caught the thought. _You helped as best you could, Charles, and that’s all anyone can ask for: your best._

_It’s not enough._

_It’s more than enough. Don’t turn on yourself. Sometimes things go wrong and it’s not your fault. It’s bigotry, as you said, that’s to blame. And if you need evidence that you’ve done any good at all—look around you; look at me._

_It’s not **enough**. _ The connection he tethered to Mary flashed suddenly; he drew himself in, steadying it.

_Let go_ , Erik said.

_I need to see she’s all right._ Mary didn’t seem to be spiralling into self-destruction, at least, but her despair was bone-deep, a pain no child should have to endure. And while the Headmaster seemed to be handling it sensitively, there was still no escaping the final blow: that she must remain among the bullies. _I can’t do much good, I know, but—_

_You’ll drive yourself mad, Charles. Your worth isn’t contingent on what happens from here on._

_It’s not about_ me—

_Isn’t it?_

_No_ , he said, along with a wave of complete rejection that curled his insides before fanning out to Erik.

To his surprise, Erik didn’t say anything more, but a sudden wellspring of support spilled across the link—dark, warm, and solid, like an autumn oak. _Oh,_ Charles thought, unsure. _Oh. Thank you._ The frazzle in his mind, the tense coils, the wound-upness, sighed into the warmth. Then he started in again— _why couldn’t I have done this for Mary, why couldn’t I, I couldn’t_ —but it was a useless fight against the inexorable catharsis, and he wondered if it wasn’t Erik who was the true Legilimens, coaxing his mind into peace as he did.

_No. Her pain was too great,_ Erik said. _Not because of you, but it was. But_ you _can lay down your burden. Less pain all around._

Charles disagreed, truly he did. But still the tightness in him unspooled like cool thread spilling onto the ground. And he thought: _How could you do this to me?_

~~~~~

It was possible that Charles was biased against Slytherin. Just a tad, a tiny tadpole tad. A remnant of bitterness that carried over only in his songs—he never mentioned Godric’s brashness alongside his courage, nor the seed of gullibility in Helga’s loyalty, nor the myopia Rowena’s academic theories had sometimes nurtured; but Charles didn’t shy from Salazar, his cunning always paired with a hunger for power, blood purity inextricable from ambition.

_That certainly explains things_ , Erik said. _I’m not fond of Slytherins, as you know, and of course I wouldn’t be if you put the worst lot there._

_I’m perfectly fair for the Sorting itself,_ Charles insisted.

_Then why_ , Erik said, _is Slytherin at least a quarter lug-headed minions? Hardly any shrewdness, and dull ambition besides._

Charles would have unequivocally denied all of that, except that Erik was sort of right. _Well. I do take their choices into account. Many of those_ are _attracted to the Dark Arts, which Slytherin is famed for. And ambition is ambition—they seek power._

Charles heard Erik thinking that part of that might be because they could not be Sorted anywhere else—they were spineless, dull, and disloyal. Charles pretended he didn’t hear this thought, but Erik proceeded, more pointedly, _Hogwarts should be more discriminating in their admission policies._

_All Wizarding children are entitled to an education._

_Well, I don’t see how Hogwarts is considered a premium school if it has dullards like those._

_It wouldn’t be much of a school if it only trained those already capable and ignored the ones who truly need help, would it? Now—what rhymes with Hufflepuff?_ As if he didn’t already have an extensive repository of possible rhymes with any given House (and with that, the acute gratification that _Gryffindor_ and _Ravenclaw_ made for a decent rhyme).

_Good for a laugh_ , Erik offered.

Charles knew for a fact that Erik liked Hufflepuffs. He rather liked Hufflepuffs himself. Still, he sang, “ _Hufflepuff, good for a laugh_ ,” just to try out a new tune. He could never quite figure if Erik was amused or exasperated by his composing.

_Both_ , Erik said. _And with a good measure of annoyance too—haven’t you got anything better to do?_

_Oh, be quiet. I know how you like my singing voice._ Charles liked to think that the bond coloured with some embarrassment at his entirely true inference, but outwardly, Erik remained as bottle-blue as ever. Pretty, but indiscernible.

_Pretty, Charles?_

Charles unrepentantly segued into another rhyming jaunt: _pretty, witty, ditty, definitely something Ravenclaw there-itty_.

_Definitely something, all right; your rhymes, they’re sh—_

_Shining examples of songcraft. I haven’t had a half rhyme since 1387, and that was an artistic choice._

The things they talked about, right up until the time Erik was put out again and Charles said _See you soon_ , were just as trivial, even as they warmed him with laughter and companionship. Perhaps if he’d known… But he couldn’t have. He couldn’t have known that this would be the last time they’d speak for a long, long time.

~~~~~

Erik was almost always extinguished before the Tournament began proper. He was, after all, only ever needed for the selection of Champions, a scant two weeks in which Charles and Erik would scramble to fuel their connection after each five-year separation. Some years Charles would abstrusely convince the Headmaster to overlook putting out Erik, leaving him burning for at least some time into the first task (the year the human Erik had died rather prematurely, this had been the case).

Not this year.

Erik liked to say that owing to their rather stupid-looking faces—they were roosters, for heaven’s sake. They had _wattles_ —cockatrices had a complex. They had something to compensate for, which they did by being almost cartoonishly vicious. (Well. Erik said _cartoonish_ , but the subjects of their attacks would describe them as something closer to _terrifying_. But Erik himself admitted that he had no sympathy for human victims, a self-definition Charles had always considered rather at odds with Erik’s cherished chosen Champions.)

Erik would have liked this, Charles thought. Watching the first task from the square window of the tower—or, more accurately, piggybacking in various onlookers’ minds for the best view—Charles was once again struck by how _stupid_ a rooster’s head the size of a dragon’s head looked: black bulging beady eyes, comb and wattles wobbling with each exaggerated sweep of its head. Like a puppeteer operating something much bigger than he was used to.

As the Durmstrang girl, Frieda, craned her neck to eyeball the enormous creature, Charles leapt into her mind. She was feeling some measure of trepidation, though it was mostly earthed over with cool assessment. If it were a mere matter of downing the beast, it would be easy: a shot to the eye or a simple destructive fire. As things stood, though, she had to capture it. In that second, Frieda (quite rightly, Charles thought) decided that the cockatrice was too massive to bind with any sort of ligature; she had to stop it entirely, freeze it or stun it or otherwise.

Her efforts were admirable. They certainly made for good viewing—sheets of ice crystallising in the air in a show of truly formidable spell work. When that didn’t work, she tried stunning fields, and finally physical steel chains in case her initial assessment had been wrong. But no charm she casted ever lasted against the sheer size of the cockatrice, bouncing off it like spells would bounce off a giant. Frieda only succeeded in making it angry. Charles nearly flinched out of her mind when the cockatrice bore down on her, murder in its eyes. It was not so cartoonish now. It ran rampant, each shrill squawk almost as much of a weapon as its sharp claws, wounding the three Headmasters in its mad wake.

Funny that that should be the last straw, Charles would later think, in those interminable years of separation. Not the student deaths or the bloodlust-glory or even the exorbitant fees, but bloody snicks on the Headmasters.

The year was 1792 and the Triwizard Tournament was abolished. It might have been a step forward for the Wizarding World, to end a brutish Tournament meant to foster international magical cooperation but which instead mostly fostered a climbing death toll. It might have been a sign of changing times. But all Charles could think, as the decision was debated and made, was of Erik’s closed casket. A coffin, now.

~~~~~

There was some comfort in the fact that Erik would never be aware of the time between. ( _Between_ —not very apt if there were to be no close.)At least—there _should_ have been some comfort. But Charles could only reach out into the dead space of Erik’s absent mind and think that Erik was essentially dead, where before he had merely been sleeping. The difference being, of course, the possibility of waking up.

But mere possibility wasn’t the problem. Hope was. For over the centuries, the wizards missed the viciousness just as fiercely as he missed Erik, and the sporadic attempts at starting the Tournament gave Charles that poison. Just one, Charles thought. He need only one, and the wizards could discontinue it thereafter—he only needed one more chance to talk with Erik, to sink into his mind, to have at least a proper goodbye. And he entertained fantasies of that second chance, stealing Erik’s consciousness into another vessel even as they tried to put him out, and Erik and he could be side by side, forever.

Hope snagged at him even in his misery, and as each attempt to restart the Tournament turned to failure, so too did each extinguished flair of hope only sharpen his despair. Why should it be now that the reliable human want for brutality fail? _So there you go, Erik,_ Charles thought bitterly. _Here is my counterexample to your determined pessimism. See how the humans reject the petitions for more violence._

And so the years wore on: grey and watery, and darkening.

Then one petition for violence stuck.

~~~~~

They lit him for a day and a night, and he was only in the Headmaster’s office for a few hours.

Charles watched, almost tipping off the high shelf in his eagerness, as Dumbledore popped open the casket—and Charles couldn’t restrain a sharp inhale at seeing the wooden curve of the Goblet—and placed it on his desk. Charles barely registered the way Dumbledore’s blue eyes flicked to him even as he drew his wand round to ignite the Goblet. To bring Erik back.

There were other people in the office too: organisers, professors, sponsors, Ministry officials. They applauded as Dumbledore made a final flick of his wand and the first spark of flame came up into the air. Charles was high enough that the wizards did not impede his view.

_Erik._

A lick of flame, then another and another, multiplying in blue shades across the rim of the Goblet. That home-worn mind burning warm, as though the years were nothing. And they had been nothing, hadn’t they, for Erik… Charles could only feel unspeakable joy flaring through him. He barely noticed the others filing from the room, Dumbledore in the lead, to celebrate in a space less crowded up by spindly tables and magical instruments.

_Charles?_

~~~~~

It took longer than he would’ve thought, before he realised that Erik was sick. The joy of their reunion, the old-new touch of Erik’s mind, must have at first kept him from feeling the strangeness in it.

_They’ll take me down soon, Charles, for the students to put forth their names—but at least I’ll be here._

In the mind. Far better than none at all. _I wish you could stay,_ he said uselessly, an echo of all the pleas he’d tossed into the air in those absent years, finally with a recipient. It was then that he felt it—the tiredness and overall _misplacedness_ in Erik. It might be a side-effect of the time he went unlit, but— _Are you all right, Erik?_ he sent, along with a faint projection of what he sensed.

A flicker and a pause. _I don’t know what it is_ , Erik said. _This—fogginess, this miasma, that’s come over me._

Charles delved in again and tried to trace the source. _It’s some foreign magic,_ he finally concluded. _Some—Erik, someone’s tampered with you._

Erik’s flames grew white-bright and indignant as his mind whirred. The thought of compromising the integrity of the Tournament—the thought of being interfered with— _Who? Charles, find the wizard, I know you can._

But Charles was too preoccupied with soothing over the patched up spaces in Erik’s mind, coaxing the sickness into languor. _How do you feel?_ he said instead. _Any faintness? Are you—oh, my friend, please be fine._

_Don’t fret_ , Erik said, but his tone was gentle. _I’m won’t be leaving you for this, at least. But who—?_

It was too late then, for the door opened and Dumbledore entered. He glanced between the two of them, hat and goblet, before leaving with Erik. Charles stared at them as they headed out, keeping the connection with Erik almost too tightly, half-afraid that it would split when Erik went out of sight. When it lived on, he felt relief mingle with his sadness.

_I’m still here, Charles._

_Yet you’re away_ , he said, _but no matter. It’s a small thing, distance._ His voice sounded too plaintive still. He only hoped Erik would let it slide.

The murky shadow in Erik’s mind seemed to seep into Charles, a dread of what was to come. For all that the years apart illuminated their reunion, they also tainted that joy with memory-borne anxiety—the spectre thought of an inevitable close.

~~~~~

The fate of the world, both Wizarding and Muggle, was in jeopardy from Voldemort’s return, but Charles’ hate was more personal: Tom had made a mess of the Triwizard Tournament. With the death of a student, it had been discontinued (and even the most uptight of people would surely admit that that was a bit laughable, considering the Tournament’s previous death toll). Erik was set aside to gather dust once more. Charles was left alone on the shelf. He couldn’t say which fate was worse; but in the darkest hours he always wished selfishly that he and Erik could change places, to not be the one left waiting, not again.

The war came closer and closer; remarkably, with it the human world pressed upon him like a glass, on the fringe of involvement. All he ever wanted, once upon a time. And for a time, he cared only for the mission, the humans. Perhaps that was not so surprising; it was all he had.

But he could not have been that close—or perhaps too close, in the manner that pressing up against something could obscure your view of it—because it was only when everything passed did he think: _Why don’t I appeal to the humans?_

They were kind and brave and intelligent. He ought to know; he’d Sorted very many of them. Another case of too-close pointillism, he thought: knowing humans so intimately, knowing their very minds, had blinded him to the larger solution for all those years.

How much time he had wasted! How much he had already lost, even from the very beginning!

“Erik,” escaped from him in a quiet breath.

Harry Potter, who was examining the portraits on the wall, turned around at the sound. “What’s that?” he said, eyes straying for a moment before landing on Charles. Harry was feeling nostalgic and sad. He was also thinking that a life as a Hat might be lonely, as they all did; but thought it only for a moment before the thought passed, as it always did.

For the first time, Charles asked a human, “Might you do something for me?”

~~~~~

When the volume of manipulated objects exceeds even Peeves’ capabilities, a new legend arises: a metal elemental in the bones in Hogwarts. It warms the pipes and freezes them solid; it turns doorknobs loose and brings the chandelier crashing down; it moves the moving staircases. Now, the thing about Hogwarts is that it’s old; a _new_ legend, that calls for some attention.

For the few students unfortunate enough to gain entrance to the Headmaster’s office, curiously scanning the room from their downturned heads, their gaze first lands on the moving portraits, and then the Sorting Hat. Their eyes glance over the old cup beside it—the hat and cup are always quietly set beside each other—its blue flames, barely visible over the lip, too dim to garner interest. The more psychically sensitive feel a comfort in the room, like the hearthstone drape of Hogwarts at large, projected from that corner of the shelf.

But students fade; Headmasters fade; humans fade. Like passing shadows in the hulking castle, lit by dawn and gone by dusk. Eventually, new legends turn old; the newest old, they say, high in the triple-turret tower, eternal…

(As usual, the humans miss the point: _Together._ )


End file.
